I also work mostly on research grants, and I have the opposite experience. The grants are only concerned with the paper, not the code. Getting research money for the code is nearly impossible. However, usually writting the paper require adjustments in the code, which is how I'm paid.
I also get a few development contracts from users of the (free) code, but most of the money are from the research grants.
The term *used* to cover languages where variables have types that can be (and conventionally are) checked at compile time.
However, since the term had strong connotations, advocates of languages where values have types that can be (and conventionally are) checked at run time, started claiming that their languages are also strongly type cjecked.
As a result, the term is today meaningless. What I use instead is talking about static typechecking (type errors detected by the programmer at compile time) and dynamic typecheckig (type errors detected by the user at run time).
If you limit the developers to people who actually like working together, and have simular ideas of how to behave and talk to other people, more can often be done than if you also invite all the socially dysfunct coders, who cannot take a rejection of patch as anything but a personal insult (or, for the true nutcase, some political game).
There are more than a couple of great coders out there with zero people skill. They can damage a project because, even though their own contributions are great, they lower the fun level and therefore productivity of everybody else.
Apparently, nobody cares enough about that feature to implement it or fund the implementation.
Commnercial software can contain any kind of junk, because they have locked their customers to proprietary technology. But free software is market driven, only stuff which matters to people with the right skill or money are implemented.
The original reason for the fork was that Lucid could not get their patches integrated into GNU Emacs and released fast enough to fit their commercial interest, and RMS didn't care. So they made their own release.
Lucid *did* sign all the necessary paperworks, later contributers to the fork, in particular Sun, didn't. This loack of paperwork is a contributing factor that the two branches haven't been merged.
There is a lot in common with the two Lisp dialects, most of the "big" applications works on both. A few API's are different, in particular the extend API is XEmacs only. I'm not sure I like the XEmacs API's, some of them are very hard to understand (I put up a lot of effort in understanding specifiers before giving up). The shared API's are usually simpler, and I recommend sticking to them.
The cl package (with some Common Lisp extensions)works for both, but is pre-loaded in XEmacs. There is also a CLOS (subset) implementation for GNU Emacs, which may or may not have been ported to XEmacs.
In thery, GNU Emacs is supposed to switch to Guile (the GNU Scheme implementation) as the "internal" extension language, but that has been the plan for so many years that it is unlikely to happen.
Like may be the case for autolisp, much of the value of Emacs lies in the extensions written in Emacs Lisp, which makes it hard to make non-compatible changes.
Emacs *should* make gtk integration a priority, since gtk is the toolkit of Gnome, which is the official GNU desktop. It is embarrasing that the flagship GNU application (Eamcs) does not integrate smoothly into the GNU desktop.
Today both XEmacs has Emacs have big problems with their release process, the last feature release of GNU Emacs is three year old, and the XEmacs situation is confusing. Lots of cool stuff is in CVS in both projects, getting nowhere.
MULE was actually merged into XEmacs long before Emacs. But in XEmacs it was a compile time option, where in Emacs it was forced upon all users. Both places, MULE was rather buggy. In XEmacs it ment that sers just disabled it. For Emacs, it ment that users either refused to upgrade, fleed to XEmacs, or fixed the bugs. Anough choose the later that the result is that Emacs today have much better working Mule code than XEmacs.
If you resuse software, you will be able to benefit from other peoples experiences. In a business case, you will be able to hire people with prior experience.
If you reivent the software, you will have to make every mistake yourself.
You may have to make changes to your organization and how you work in order to reuse software. So what? How is this different from any other tool? If you are unconfortable to adapt your organization to a changing environment, you are going to crash and burn in the marketplace anyway.
The only advantage of custom software over traditional COTS software is that you keep the control of your infrastructure within in your own organization. However, with free software you can keep control, while avoiding to reinvent the wheel.
Because there also is an infinite number of universes where the wormholes can end. So the wormhole endpoint density will be infinite divided by infinite, which can be any number whatever.
It is a very common theme in science fiction, and even more common in fantasy. Heck, even Galactus of the Marvel universe is a survivor from an earlier universe.
1) Because the benefit to the economy of rewarding people with patents for publising ideas, does not outweight the damage done to the economy by the monopoly. Or so the economists say.
2) Because I, as a programmer, do not want to be a lawyer as well.
3) Nor do I want to be forced to work for one of a very small number of companies, with enough patents to have cross-license agreements with each other.
4) Because no nation with software patents have ever been able to limit them to really novel and non-obvious ideas. This include the software patents granted by the illegal preactice of European Patent Office.
5) More generally, because I should be able to use my own ideas freely. Copyright limit how others can use your expressions, patents limit how others can use their own ideas.
They are two different user agents build around the same rendering engine (and other libraries, like network). So rendering bugs fixed in one will help the other.
In _Strata_, a kind of prequel to the _Discworld_ series, the Morris dance is kept alive on an Earth with a dwindling population by robots.
Sometimes science fiction writers predictions turn out to be true (even if that is not the purpose of sf), but I'm sure *which* predictions hold water come as a surprise to the writers.
I'm not sure Oracle is big enough to benefit from software patents. In the medium time, it will benefit only three groups:
a) a small number of very big companies (IBM, Microsoft), who will have cross-license agreements with each other, thus basically making themselves imune to the damage they do the rest of the industry.
b) a larger number of small companies, who have no products of their own (and thus is invulnerable themselves), but make a living of selling patent rights to others.
c) "ip" lawyers.
In the long term, the damage done to the economy and society will damage *everyone*, but in the long term we are all dead, so that is not going to concern the above groups (except maybe IBM, who seem strangely enlightened about such issues).
> And spam writers simply write spam that exposes > weaknesses in baysian filters.
No, the spam writers actually enter my property. That is like the people who spread vira, people who break into houses, or people who set off bombs. Or make unauthorized copies of dvd's.
Those who write the code to defeat baysian filters are not spammers, but on the categogy with people who write vira or create universal keys, or write on the net how to create bombs from household chemicals. Or write decsc.
The later group may expect some protection as freedom of expression. The first group should have no such protection.
The question is, do we believe that we can improve society through ignorance? If not, we must protect the second group, even when they do something we dislike.
Guild Wars may be for you then. In is a MMORG, but not really. It is based heavely on a more or less linear story, divided into missions, like most single player games. You can play each mission with other a party of other people, or with NPC henchmen. The henchmen are not quite as strong as the player characters, but sometimes smarter. During a mission, you won't meet anyone outside your party.
You meet other players at towns and outposts (each mission start at an outpost), as well as at the PvP areas and guild houses. But you won't have to deal with them when you don't want in order to play the game.
Hellboy, From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are a few of the movie adaptions of comic books you missed (these have never been adapted as cartoons).
Neil Gaiman suggested that the reason Hollywood like comic books as source material, is that Hollywood produceres don't like reading books.
And rightly so. B should not be granted a patent for an invention someone else had publicated early.
The whole idea of the patent system is to reward inventors for publicating their inventions for the benefit of the society, rather than keeping the inventions secret. A short monopoly is thought to be less harmful for society than a (permanent) secret.
I don't know about France (or US), but in Danish law civil and criminal law is mixed up in two cases. The first is libel, and the other is copyright law. In both cases, private entitites can start a lawsuit with claim of prison sentenses.
This is very good for free sofwtare and it is very good for the economy. I love how IBM apparently both get free software, and is intend of passing this understanding to others. It was seen in the Linux prodigy commercial which in very simple terms explained the power of free software to laymen, and it is seen in this quote from the article:
In recent speeches, for example, Samuel J. Palmisano, I.B.M.'s chief executive, has emphasized the need for more open technology standards and collaboration as a way to stimulate economic growth and job creation.
What I don't see is how it directly help IBM. Of course, economic growth and job creation will indirectly help IBM, as IBM will likely take its fair share of an expanding economy. However, that would put "enligthened self interest" to the extreme, with a bit of hybris in it. Red Hat can calculate that way, better have a smaller part of big Linux market, than dominate a small Linux market. But IBM isn't as dominating in the world economy as Red Hat is in the Linux market.
Of course it is possible that the move is a pure PR stunt, and the patents are worthless anyway. But I'm not that cynical.
Slashdot Mirror
I also work mostly on research grants, and I have the opposite experience. The grants are only concerned with the paper, not the code. Getting research money for the code is nearly impossible. However, usually writting the paper require adjustments in the code, which is how I'm paid.
I also get a few development contracts from users of the (free) code, but most of the money are from the research grants.
The term *used* to cover languages where variables have types that can be (and conventionally are) checked at compile time.
However, since the term had strong connotations, advocates of languages where values have types that can be (and conventionally are) checked at run time, started claiming that their languages are also strongly type cjecked.
As a result, the term is today meaningless. What I use instead is talking about static typechecking (type errors detected by the programmer at compile time) and dynamic typecheckig (type errors detected by the user at run time).
Python rely on dynamic typechecking.
It takes a somewhat different approach to the issue, with the focus on what you want to accomplish, rather than the technicalities of each license.
Maybe it is about having fun...
If you limit the developers to people who actually like working together, and have simular ideas of how to behave and talk to other people, more can often be done than if you also invite all the socially dysfunct coders, who cannot take a rejection of patch as anything but a personal insult (or, for the true nutcase, some political game).
There are more than a couple of great coders out there with zero people skill. They can damage a project because, even though their own contributions are great, they lower the fun level and therefore productivity of everybody else.
Some of them make great solo projects...
Apparently, nobody cares enough about that feature to implement it or fund the implementation.
Commnercial software can contain any kind of junk, because they have locked their customers to proprietary technology. But free software is market driven, only stuff which matters to people with the right skill or money are implemented.
Put this line in your .Xdefaults:
8 859-15
emacs.font: -misc-fixed-*-*-semicondensed-*-*-120-*-*-c-*-iso
The original reason for the fork was that Lucid could not get their patches integrated into GNU Emacs and released fast enough to fit their commercial interest, and RMS didn't care. So they made their own release.
Lucid *did* sign all the necessary paperworks, later contributers to the fork, in particular Sun, didn't. This loack of paperwork is a contributing factor that the two branches haven't been merged.
There is a lot in common with the two Lisp dialects, most of the "big" applications works on both. A few API's are different, in particular the extend API is XEmacs only. I'm not sure I like the XEmacs API's, some of them are very hard to understand (I put up a lot of effort in understanding specifiers before giving up). The shared API's are usually simpler, and I recommend sticking to them.
The cl package (with some Common Lisp extensions)works for both, but is pre-loaded in XEmacs. There is also a CLOS (subset) implementation for GNU Emacs, which may or may not have been ported to XEmacs.
In thery, GNU Emacs is supposed to switch to Guile (the GNU Scheme implementation) as the "internal" extension language, but that has been the plan for so many years that it is unlikely to happen.
Like may be the case for autolisp, much of the value of Emacs lies in the extensions written in Emacs Lisp, which makes it hard to make non-compatible changes.
XEmacs had color support for tty's first.
Emacs *should* make gtk integration a priority, since gtk is the toolkit of Gnome, which is the official GNU desktop. It is embarrasing that the flagship GNU application (Eamcs) does not integrate smoothly into the GNU desktop.
Today both XEmacs has Emacs have big problems with their release process, the last feature release of GNU Emacs is three year old, and the XEmacs situation is confusing. Lots of cool stuff is in CVS in both projects, getting nowhere.
MULE was actually merged into XEmacs long before Emacs. But in XEmacs it was a compile time option, where in Emacs it was forced upon all users. Both places, MULE was rather buggy. In XEmacs it ment that sers just disabled it. For Emacs, it ment that users either refused to upgrade, fleed to XEmacs, or fixed the bugs. Anough choose the later that the result is that Emacs today have much better working Mule code than XEmacs.
If you resuse software, you will be able to benefit from other peoples experiences. In a business case, you will be able to hire people with prior experience.
If you reivent the software, you will have to make every mistake yourself.
You may have to make changes to your organization and how you work in order to reuse software. So what? How is this different from any other tool? If you are unconfortable to adapt your organization to a changing environment, you are going to crash and burn in the marketplace anyway.
The only advantage of custom software over traditional COTS software is that you keep the control of your infrastructure within in your own organization. However, with free software you can keep control, while avoiding to reinvent the wheel.
Because there also is an infinite number of universes where the wormholes can end. So the wormhole endpoint density will be infinite divided by infinite, which can be any number whatever.
It is a very common theme in science fiction, and even more common in fantasy. Heck, even Galactus of the Marvel universe is a survivor from an earlier universe.
1) Because the benefit to the economy of rewarding people with patents for publising ideas, does not outweight the damage done to the economy by the monopoly. Or so the economists say.
2) Because I, as a programmer, do not want to be a lawyer as well.
3) Nor do I want to be forced to work for one of a very small number of companies, with enough patents to have cross-license agreements with each other.
4) Because no nation with software patents have ever been able to limit them to really novel and non-obvious ideas. This include the software patents granted by the illegal preactice of European Patent Office.
5) More generally, because I should be able to use my own ideas freely. Copyright limit how others can use your expressions, patents limit how others can use their own ideas.
They are two different user agents build around the same rendering engine (and other libraries, like network). So rendering bugs fixed in one will help the other.
In _Strata_, a kind of prequel to the _Discworld_ series, the Morris dance is kept alive on an Earth with a dwindling population by robots.
Sometimes science fiction writers predictions turn out to be true (even if that is not the purpose of sf), but I'm sure *which* predictions hold water come as a surprise to the writers.
I'm not sure Oracle is big enough to benefit from software patents. In the medium time, it will benefit only three groups:
a) a small number of very big companies (IBM, Microsoft), who will have cross-license agreements with each other, thus basically making themselves imune to the damage they do the rest of the industry.
b) a larger number of small companies, who have no products of their own (and thus is invulnerable themselves), but make a living of selling patent rights to others.
c) "ip" lawyers.
In the long term, the damage done to the economy and society will damage *everyone*, but in the long term we are all dead, so that is not going to concern the above groups (except maybe IBM, who seem strangely enlightened about such issues).
It would certainly help them "think different"
> And spam writers simply write spam that exposes
> weaknesses in baysian filters.
No, the spam writers actually enter my property. That is like the people who spread vira, people who break into houses, or people who set off bombs. Or make unauthorized copies of dvd's.
Those who write the code to defeat baysian filters are not spammers, but on the categogy with people who write vira or create universal keys, or write on the net how to create bombs from household chemicals. Or write decsc.
The later group may expect some protection as freedom of expression. The first group should have no such protection.
The question is, do we believe that we can improve society through ignorance? If not, we must protect the second group, even when they do something we dislike.
You meet other players at towns and outposts (each mission start at an outpost), as well as at the PvP areas and guild houses. But you won't have to deal with them when you don't want in order to play the game.
Comic books, not cartoons.
Hellboy, From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are a few of the movie adaptions of comic books you missed (these have never been adapted as cartoons).
Neil Gaiman suggested that the reason Hollywood like comic books as source material, is that Hollywood produceres don't like reading books.
And rightly so. B should not be granted a patent for an invention someone else had publicated early.
The whole idea of the patent system is to reward inventors for publicating their inventions for the benefit of the society, rather than keeping the inventions secret. A short monopoly is thought to be less harmful for society than a (permanent) secret.
I don't know about France (or US), but in Danish law civil and criminal law is mixed up in two cases. The first is libel, and the other is copyright law. In both cases, private entitites can start a lawsuit with claim of prison sentenses.
Of course it is possible that the move is a pure PR stunt, and the patents are worthless anyway. But I'm not that cynical.
When a monopoly bundle non-monopoly goods with their monopoly goods it is bad. When a non-monopoly does it, it is fine.
This has nothing to do with Microsoft or Apple, it is a legal distincsion based on market economics.